Phoenicia | ||||||||||||||||
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General information | ||||||||||||||||
Location | Station Road, Phoenicia, Ulster County, New York 12464 | |||||||||||||||
Tracks | 1 | |||||||||||||||
History | ||||||||||||||||
Opened | May 23, 1870 [1] | |||||||||||||||
Closed | March 31, 1954 [2] | |||||||||||||||
Services | ||||||||||||||||
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Phoenicia Railroad Station | ||||||||||||||||
Location | Phoenicia, NY | |||||||||||||||
Nearest city | Kingston | |||||||||||||||
Coordinates | 42°04′49″N74°18′30″W / 42.08028°N 74.30833°W | |||||||||||||||
Area | less than one acre | |||||||||||||||
Built | 1899 [3] | |||||||||||||||
Architectural style | Shingle Style | |||||||||||||||
NRHP reference No. | 95000474 [4] | |||||||||||||||
Added to NRHP | April 20, 1995 |
Phoenicia station is a repurposed train station located on High Street just south of Phoenicia, New York, United States. It is a frame building that opened in 1899.
It was built by the Ulster and Delaware Railroad to replace an earlier station, primarily serving the patrons of hotels in the surrounding Catskill Mountains. It remained in use for about 55 years, after the New York Central Railroad bought the U&D on February 1, 1932, and ultimately ran its last passenger train on March 31, 1954. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995 as the Phoenicia Railroad Station, and today is home to the Empire State Railway Museum.
The station is located just south of High Street, a road that leads into Phoenicia from the NY 28 state highway. It is situated in an open area on the flood plain of nearby Esopus Creek across from the southwestern foot of Mount Tremper. There is a parking lot to the south, and a kiosk to the north, but no other buildings in the area save a small sandwich shop.
The building itself is a one-story rectangular frame structure on a stone foundation sided in wood shingles. Its peaked roof, shingled in asphalt, is pierced by a stone chimney on the west side. [3]
Continuous wooden molding runs around the building where the foundation, of bluestone in an ashlar pattern, gives way to the shingles. The wall flares outward slightly between it and another molded course below the windows. The roof has a deep overhang, with exposed eaves and decorative brackets. It shelters a wooden platform, raised so that boarding stools would not be needed, at trackside. [3]
Inside, the station retains its original layout except for one closet that was built for electrical control equipment. Both the waiting room and the baggage room are now given over to museum displays. They are sided in narrow beadboard yellow pine, laid both horizontally and vertically, up to the vaulted ceiling. The floors have three-inch (7.5 cm) tongue and groove planking. [3]
Between the two rooms on the track side is the ticket agent's office, which retains its brass window bars and milk-glass windows. The original benches, water fountain and sink are still in the waiting room along with an original heating grate. A cast iron air distribution pedestal was moved slightly from its original location to make room for a new electrical outlet. [3]
The track next to the station is standard gauge. It is the only one of five that were once here. [3]
Thomas Cornell started the Ulster and Delaware's predecessor, the Rondout and Oswego, in 1866 to get goods from Central New York to what is now Kingston: already the terminus of the Delaware and Hudson Canal, which had established itself as the main route carrying coal from Northeast Pennsylvania to New York City via the Hudson River. Phoenicia would be, for a long time, the southern terminus of its narrow-gauge lines, with a branch, the Stony Clove and Catskill Mountain Railroad, opened through Stony Clove Notch to Hunter in 1882. [3]
The first Phoenicia station was an 1870 masonry building located near the present intersection of Plank Road and Lower High Street in Phoenicia. The station's business increased when the branch was built in 1882; this led to two porticos being added, one on each side. Eventually, in 1900, the Ulster and Delaware would reach Oneonta. In 1899, the branch line was converted to standard-gauge due to steady growth in its passenger service to mountain resorts. [3]
This new pre-fabricated structure (a near duplicate of the still-extant Oneonta Station, now a local bar and restaurant named "The Depot") was now the busiest station on the line, serving both the main line and the branch. In 1913, its busiest year, 676,000 passengers passed through. [3] Its five tracks and relocation prevented the backups that had been caused by the trains stopped at Phoenicia to load and unload passengers, since trains extended onto the nearby Esopus Creek bridge. [5]
It also had a freight house which served both the main line and the branches, just like the passenger station. In 1906, it was used as a location by Biograph for Holdup of the Rocky Mountain Express: an early nickelodeon film shot on paper, since transferred to film by the Library of Congress. Even after the Ulster and Delaware collapsed and was sold to the New York Central Railroad on February 1, 1932, the station remained busy. After passenger service was ended on March 31, 1954, the station was left to deteriorate. On October 2, 1976, Penn Central ended freight service [5] and abandoned the entire line.
However, before it could be destroyed, John Ham, a local railroad buff, purchased the station from Penn Central. It is currently the home of the Empire State Railway Museum, which opened there in 1985.
After the Esopus flooded, following Hurricane Irene in 2011, the museum building suffered damage and closed indefinitely. The museum's staff later repaired and reopened it. [6] It has been open for self-guided tours weekends and holidays Memorial Day through Columbus Day.
Phoenicia is a hamlet of Shandaken in Ulster County, New York, United States. The population was 268 at the 2020 census, making it the second highest populated community in the town. The village center is located just off Route 28 at its junction with Route 214 and is nestled at the base of three peaks, Mount Tremper, Romer Mountain, and Sheridan Mountain. The community sits at the confluence of the Esopus Creek and Stony Clove Creek. A popular getaway for New Yorkers, the hamlet has frequented many tourism guides as among the best vacation towns in the greater New York City area.
The Catskill Mountains, also known as the Catskills, are a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Mountains, located in southeastern New York. As a cultural and geographic region, the Catskills are generally defined as those areas close to or within the borders of the Catskill Park, a 700,000-acre (2,800 km2) forest preserve protected from many forms of development under New York state law.
The Ulster and Delaware Railroad (U&D) was a railroad located in the state of New York. It was often advertised as "The Only All-Rail Route to the Catskill Mountains." At its greatest extent, the U&D extended 107 miles (172 km) from Kingston Point on the Hudson River through the Catskill Mountains to its western terminus at Oneonta, passing through the counties of Ulster, Delaware, Schoharie and Otsego.
Esopus Creek is a 65.4-mile-long (105.3 km) tributary of the Hudson River that drains the east-central Catskill Mountains in the U.S. state of New York. From its source at Winnisook Lake on the slopes of Slide Mountain, the Catskills' highest peak, it flows across Ulster County to the Hudson at Saugerties. Many tributaries extend its watershed into neighboring Greene County and a small portion of Delaware County. Midway along its length, it is impounded at Olive Bridge to create Ashokan Reservoir, the first of several built in the Catskills as part of New York City's water supply system. Its own flow is supplemented 13 miles (21 km) above the reservoir by the Shandaken Tunnel, which carries water from the city's Schoharie Reservoir into the creek.
The Catskill Mountain Railroad is a heritage tourist railroad based in Kingston, New York, that began operations in 1982. The railroad leases a 4.7-mile portion of the former New York Central Railroad Catskill Mountain branch from Kingston to Stony Hollow, New York. The tracks are owned by Ulster County, New York, which bought them in 1979 from the bankruptcy estate of the Penn Central Railroad. The railroad's current permit with Ulster County expires on December 31, 2023.
Laurel House station, branch MP 18.5, was built as part of the three-foot gauge Kaaterskill Railroad, an extension of the Stony Clove and Catskill Mountain Railroad. It was built so passengers could stop there and take a horse and carriage to the Laurel House, a hotel that was nearby. When it was built, it was anything but an actual station; in fact, it was nothing but a platform. When the Ulster and Delaware standard-gauged the railroad in 1899, it was replaced with an actual station. The branch it served would become an actual part of the railroad in 1903.
Cold Brook is a former railroad station in the Boiceville section of the town of Olive, Ulster County, New York, United States. Located on Cold Brook Road, just north of New York State Route 28A next to Esopus Creek, Cold Brook station served the New York Central Railroad's Catskill Mountain Branch, formerly the Ulster and Delaware Railroad. The station was located 22.1 miles (35.6 km) northwest of Kingston Point station in the city of Kingston.
Mount Pleasant station, MP 24.9 on the Ulster and Delaware Railroad, served the town of Mount Pleasant, New York, and was three miles from the site where the Stony Clove and Kaaterskill Branch separate from the main line at the Phoenicia station.
The Catskill and Tannersville Railway was a historic 3 ft narrow gauge railroad operating in New York.
Roxbury station is a disused train station on the former Ulster and Delaware Railroad / West Shore "Catskill Mountain Branch" in the hamlet of Roxbury, New York. The station is a contributing property to the Ulster and Delaware Railroad Depot and Mill Complex, a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places.
There were four stations built to serve the city of Kingston, New York. The first station was known as "Higginsville Station" built by the Rondout & Oswego railroad company. The second station was served by three different railroads, all of which eventually became part of the New York Central railroad company. The third station, known as "Fair Street Station", replaced the Higginsville Station in 1882. The fourth station was for the New York, Ontario and Western Railway.
Haines Falls is an abandoned train station in Haines Falls, New York. It was owned by the Ulster and Delaware Railroad. The abandoned station was restored in 1999 and is one of two surviving U&D branch stations. It is now the headquarters of the Mountain Top Historical Society. It is also the start of the Kaaterskill Rail Trail, a scenic hiking trail along the former railway.
The hamlet of Chichester, New York, formerly referred to as Chichesterville, is one of the northernmost communities in the town of Shandaken, being adjacent to the borderline between Ulster and Greene counties.
The Catskill Mountain Railway (CMRy) was a 3 ft narrow gauge railroad, 15.73 miles (25.31 km) long, running from Catskill to Palenville in Greene County, New York. Organized as the Catskill Mountain Railroad (CMRR) in 1880, it bas built in 1881 and 1882. The principals had interests in shipping on the Hudson and in hotels in the Catskill Mountains.
Established in 1960, the Empire State Railway Museum is a non-profit railroad museum currently located in the historic Ulster & Delaware Phoenicia Railroad Station, Phoenicia, New York. The station was built in 1899 by the U&D, and is one of the few surviving examples left along the line. The museum owns a small collection of historic railroad equipment. The museum was formerly the publisher of the annual Steam Railroad Directory until the 2006 edition, when the title was taken over by Kalmbach Publishing and now released as the Tourist Trains Guidebook.
The Delaware and Ulster Railroad (DURR) is a heritage railroad based in Arkville, New York.
The Ulster & Delaware Railroad Historical Society is a chapter of the National Railway Historical Society (NRHS). It focuses on the history of the railroads and related social, economic, and cultural institutions of the Catskill and Hudson Valley regions. That history, which began with the charter of the Catskill & Ithaca Railroad in 1828, encompasses numerous proposed and built railroads and trolley lines within Ulster, Delaware, Greene, Schoharie, Albany and Otsego counties.
Mount Tremper, officially known as Tremper Mountain and originally called Timothyberg, is one of the Catskill Mountains in the U.S. state of New York. It is located near the hamlet of Phoenicia, in the valley of Esopus Creek.
Michael P. Hein is an American politician who served as the 1st County Executive of Ulster County, serving until February 10, 2019 after having first been elected on November 4, 2008. Prior to the creation of this position, the 2008 ratification by referendum of the Ulster County Charter, he was the Ulster County Administrator.